Re:US Programmers vs Off Shore Programmers (Score 2, Insightful)

I should have mentioned this in my article, but I believe that Indian programmers can be as innovative as US programmers or programmers from any other country. Creativity isn't determined by nationality.

It doesn't matter where your company is based or where you outsource your programmers, if your software company outsources all its programmers, then it can't support innovation. The reason I specifically mention US companies outsourcing from India is because that's where the big trend in outsourcing programmers has emerged.

This trend in the US as described in this article and elsewhere is for a shell of a company to exist with a headquarters in the US with the president, marketing group, and sales all in the US and the programming staff all in India.

If you're building an innovative software company, you need to retain your best and brightest programmers internally. Software companies entirely based in India can successfully innovate over the long-term, as can US companies or companies based anywhere else. It's this recent trend of US software companies outsourcing all their development that's bad strategy.

One other point I'd like to make while I'm at it-- I'm only talking about software companies outsourcing programmers. For example, a pharmaceutical company can outsource programmers because they don't sell the software they're creating. But it must hire its own research scientists to develop new drugs if it wants to stay competitive.